Of course she had anticipated him: she knew all there was to know about his style. She’d known exactly what his target had to be, and she hadn’t been cutting into the chamber below in order to help activate the transceiver.

She’d been going there to destroy it.

Looked like the proton grenade blast had caught her just in time. She didn’t seem to be breathing. In the blinding swirl of dark power that filled the bunker, he could not feel if she still lived.

You have gone very quiet, dôshalo. Do you think silence can save you? Do you think that because you cannot feel me, the reverse is also true?

Too much fatigue; too much pain. He had no room left in his heart for more.

He would grieve later. Now, looking at her corpse, he felt only a vague, melancholy relief that he hadn’t had to kill her himself.

Do you think there is anything about you I don’t know?

“I think,” Mace said, “that if you were all you claim, I’d already be dead.”

He pushed himself into a forward roll that brought him up to a crouch, and looked down into the hole. She’d done most of his work for him already. He could cut through with a single stroke.


- Shatterpoint, Chapter 23